Because the Alexa service is down!
When the Alexa service is unavailable, you’ll get a reply from Alexa saying she’s “having trouble understanding right now – please try again later”.
Remember that your Echo speaker doesn’t transcribe your voice commands on the device itself. Instead, those commands are beamed up to Amazon’s servers, where they are processed. If the Amazon servers go down, your speaker basically turns into an overpriced doorstop.
Is there anything you can do when you get this message? Not really. If there’s a problem connecting to your Wi-Fi, Alexa will give you a different warning message, so don’t bother resetting the speaker or rebooting your router – it will make no difference.
Instead, you’ll simply have to sit tight and wait for Amazon to get its servers up and running again.
Now read this: What are the funniest things to say to Alexa?
Ok so how come the Echo in my lounge works perfectly but the Echo in my bedroom says “ Sorry I’m having trouble understanding right now “
If it was a problem with the Amazon servers then surely both would give the response “ Sorry I’m having trouble understanding right now “
Yet another article written through guestimation
My Alexa has been having trouble understanding for well over a week! Surely this can’t still be a problem with the server?
It’s the same situation here, one in the den works fine, bedroom one is giving that message! It’s been doing it now for almost a week! Surely there should be a number to contact right?!?!
Nope – one device understands perfectly other device say cannot understand
This is pretty inaccurate. Simply resetting the device (by removing power) works every time for me; the problem is that it’s a recurring, almost daily, issue!
Same problem here. re ‘Having trouble understanding right now’ . . . Why can’t we contact Amazon and actually ‘speak to a human’ ?